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The Planetizen News Brief

20 March 2008 - 5:00am
Smart City Radio

The Planetizen News Brief is a weekly rundown of some of the most interesting and important news and issues of the past week.

The Planetizen News Brief airs every week on the nationally-syndicated radio program "Smart City", which is broadcast in cities across the U.S. Learn more about Smart City and listen to archived shows.

Full Transcript

"The moment you step out of your house, you’re in the parks system." That’s the ambitious goal of parks officials in Miami-Dade county, who recently released a broad and extensive master plan for the county’s parks and open space. The Miami Herald reports that the master plan goes beyond the typical scope of parks planning by considering the entire public realm as its canvass. This means the park planning will include traditional parks and open spaces, but will also cover the sort of everyday experiences with public space, like when people walk down the sidewalk or ride their bike through the neighborhood. The master plan’s authors are hoping their 50-year blueprint will encourage walking and biking by creating a public park or recreational facility within a five minute walk of every resident of Miami-Dade County. But facing a land use pattern for the last 50 years that consisted mainly of paving and sprawling, achieving the master plan’s ambitious goals will be a challenge.

And while Miami-Dade’s big park plans are taking shape, a similarly far-out vision for public space is slowly gathering steam in Chicago. Station WBEZ in Chicago ran a segment recently about a group of people who are trying to generate support for an elevated bike trail. But it’s not quite as wacky as it sounds. What they want to do is convert an old, unused elevated railway line into a three-mile long inner-city bike trail. They’ve been floating this idea for years, but now have the support of the city’s mayor, department of transportation and parks department, as well as planners, environmentalists and even some well-heeled private foundations. But this support doesn’t mean the trail will be built any time soon. Proponents expect costs of nearly $50 million – a sum they may not see for a decade.

So gathering $50 million is difficult, yeah. But what about $100 million? Well, it kind of depends on what the money’s being raised for. The bike lane advocates in Chicago have waited years for their money, while developers in Los Angeles waited just months for $100 million in funding to come through for a residential and shopping project downtown. The Los Angeles Times reports that developers of the Frank Gehry-designed Grand Avenue project received funding from the royal family of Dubai to push forward with the mixed-use development, delayed for months after another funder pulled out from the project. The sagging real estate market has made many investors worried about investing in big budget projects, and some are concerned that downtown L.A. is becoming too developed. But others say the new funding for the project is proof that the market is not dead. Construction on the project could begin within a month.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Miami Parks Plan Looks Beyond Parks

Chicago Eyes an Elevated Bike Trail

New Funding Resuscitates L.A.'s Grand Avenue Project

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